The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 16 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Vanguard prepared a $5B iShares bid using Warren Buffett debt
“Well, first they went to Omaha, Nebraska and talked to Warren Buffett. Would he be interested in lending some money? And then they explained to him through their banker that they had the ability to raise money by passing it back to the funds anytime they wante…”
Nubank Has 50M Customers and a $45B Valuation
“Nubank is the largest digital bank in the world with almost 50 million customers. It's now trading at a forty five billion dollar valuation. Warren Buffett Berkshire Hathaway actually invested in a private round and in the IPO. Sequoia, SoftBank are investors.”
Warren Buffett made most of his wealth on just 10 stocks
“Buffett mentioned years ago at a Berkshire Hathaway meeting that he has owned 500 stocks over the course of his investing career. And in percentage terms, he has made most of his money on 10 of them.”
Stone Point Capital's first asset manager investment backed Todd Combs
“Stone Point's first investment in an asset manager was backing Todd Combs, who's now at Berkshire Hathaway.”
Russo: Olympus Re collapsed after Hurricane Katrina from concentrated regional risk
“I remember after Katrina, where they survived with barely a nick relative to the kind of crushing consequences that even Jack Byrne suffered with White Mountains, and then they had something called Olympusry. And it was blown up. They aggregated too much risk …”
Russo: Berkshire Compounded at ~8% From 1999-2019 vs 19% Since 1965
“And if you compound from that moment till today, I think the compound is about eight percent. Embedded, you can check that number. What year and what year was that? Between 99 to today, and then if you go back to 65, I think that's when he first starts to repo…”
Russo: Buffett insisted Berkshire subsidiaries compete instead of trading internally
“Warren insisted over the years that companies had to compete for the business, that the internal crutch of a natural demand to Clayton homes for the Acme bricks threatened over time to lead to less than market tested outcomes because each of them knew that the…”
Berkshire Subsidiary MiTek Used Phantom Stock That Increased 1,000x
“They had an interesting phantom stock arrangement. They created a phantom share. Called a share of my tech within the company. And Warren referred at one point an annual report that had gone up a thousand times.”
Russo: Berkshire Bought PacifiCorp at 10x Pre-Tax, Reinvesting at 10%+
“They paid 10 times pretext to buy that business, and then they had an endless ability to deploy capital in the capital-starved company that they bought. Scottish Power hadn't invested in that production and distribution network sufficiently, and so they had th…”
Russo: Berkshire Hathaway has experienced 50% drawdowns four times
“You know, I think over its life, they've had a 50% drawdown four years over the period of time.”
Russo: Berkshire wrote post-Katrina reinsurance for one year then pulled back
“And Berkshire survived, and then they wrote the next year, and at premiums that were massively higher, and they wrote lucky, and so they kept all the premium, because it was an event-free year. And then they didn't write the next year”
Russo: Weschler and Combs report only to Buffett without committees
“They don't have any reporting responsibilities outside of Warren, in some ways. They don't meet with committees. They don't have to describe why it is that they like Amazon to people who may not have the capacity to even understand the essential value that the…”
Warren Buffett struggles to assess foreign management compared to domestic leaders
“He doesn't feel That he has as strong a way of quickly assessing the caliber of the management in foreign markets as he does in the U.S.”
Seides: Buffett displayed the wager scoreboard right before lunch when trailing
“In the subsequent few years, he always put the results up, which he still does, right before lunch. And he would say, well, as you see, as you can see, I'm losing, so let's go to lunch.”
O'Shaughnessy: Constellation Software operates like a disciplined Berkshire for software
“Effectively what that is, is a, like Berkshire, an almost decentralized collection of software companies. So the parent Constellation, forgetting the CEO's name and his team are basically buying up individual assets, not, not micromanaging them. And they're ki…”